After fighting (eventually successfully) this summer to find a firmware-driver combination that would allow a 4-bay USB 3.0 enclosure using a JMicron 539 chipset to work reliably in USB 3.0 mode with my Dell Windows 7 (now Windows 8) machine, and recently fighting and failing to get two other docking stations to work reliably in USB 3.0 mode (with either my Mac mini (Late 2012) or the aforementioned Dell), I was relieved to find that this Plugable dock works reliably with both machines out of the box. (I now have two completely, 100% reliable SATA-to-USB 3.0 devices that work on multiple machines without issue, both based on ASMedia chipsets, this one the ASM1053 and the other the ASM1051.)

Physical notes: I like the flat configuration given my two-tiered computer desk. I can use vertical docks, but it requires a bit of angling to insert drives vertically with the dock between the tiers. The flat dock eliminates that problem and also reduces or eliminates any movement of the drive if the desk is moved or bumped. The vertical docks tend to allow a little more side-to-side movement than I like. Another minor plus: drives sit in the dock label side up, and in the typical configuration, with the dock cables away from me, most drives labels will be in the correct orientation to read the drive description. It's esthetically pleasing. My drive came with a seemingly well-constructed/shielded 3' black USB 3.0 cable. For better or worse, the power brick sits at the end of the power cord with the plug integrated. The dock will not function without external power. There is a recessed physical on-off switch on the top of the dock in the back left corner. It is nicely impossible to turn on or off accidentally.

Performance notes: Attached directly to my Mac mini (Late 2012) with a Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200.12 drive, benchmark programs show both reads and writes around 110MB/s. An actual copy operation in the Finder of a 100GB directory of home movie files averaged just over 100MB/s read from and just under 100MB/s written to. Those numbers roughly match the fastest performance I've seen over any USB 3.0 connection for this drive, so the drive is probably the limiting factor. Benchmark transfer rates were moderately lower (~90MB/s) using a slower 1.5TB Seagate Green 5900RPM drive, so again, the drive is the bottleneck. At the moment, I don't have a spare SSD to see what the dock is really capable of.

Connection Problems: Absolutely none in all of my testing, even during extended duplication operations on the drive. (Copy operations have uniformly driven my troublesome docks crazy.) (Copying the 100GB movie folder averaged just under 60MB/s simultaneously reading from and writing back to the drive.)

Other notes: The "2nd Generation" ASM1053 controller in the dock supports the more efficient UASP (USB attached SCSI protocol), but at this point, I can't verify whether my Mac supports that mode or not or whether it is active. Some of the new Macs are supposed to support it, but there's very little documentation. And I don't really have a drive capable of taking advantage of the improved speed and efficiency.

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Update: Doing a bit of digging, I've been able to verify that my Mac mini (Late 2012), OS X 10.8.2 is using the "IOUSBAttachedSCSI" IOClass driver for drives attached with this dock. By comparison, for a different ASM1051-based SATA-to-USB 3.0 adapter and my USB 3.0 blu-ray player, my Mac mini is using the "IOUSBMassStorageClass" IOClass driver. So that bodes well for the performance of this dock with faster drives, including SSDs.

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Update (April 2013): I finally had a new SSD to test with the dock, and I was delighted at the performance. The SSD was an SK Hynix SATA-III SH910 Series 128GB SSD destined to go in my wife's laptop. Using another reliable USB 3.0-SATA adapter based on the ASM1051 chipset, the SSD benchmarked at ~185Mbps write and ~190Mbps read. Pretty good. But switching to the Plugable Lay-Flat dock yielded ~285 Mbps write and ~355 Mbps read. (I confirmed using IORegistryExplorer that the Mac mini (Late 2012), OS X 10.8.3 was using the "IOUSBAttachedSCSI" IOClass driver for the drive, which I assume is responsible for the improved performance relative to the other adapter.)

Here are the advantages and disadvantages of this device.
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ADVANTAGES
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1. The plastic body is well constructed with thick plastic.
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2. It handles SATA hard drives up to 4TB.
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3. The USB 3.0 cable is thick and shielded. As a result, electrical signals does not get corrupted or degraded.
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4. It handles 3.5" and 2.5" hard drives.
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5. The USB 3.0 port, power connector, and power switch are ergonomically located.
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6. The company's tech person emailed me with various suggestions on a Sunday afternoon.
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DISADVANTAGES
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1. The product is very unstable. I have two identical Asus CM1831 computers. The Plugable does not work on either.
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Although the Device Manager, Eject Icon, and Devices and Printer screen recognized the unit's existence, the Auto Play did not activate. As a result, the drive and its files did not exist according Windows Explorer.
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Scanning the product's website, I downloaded and updated the firmware. It did nothing to solve the problem.
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So, I re-installed Windows 7 "from scratch" and used Device Genius to search the web for the latest USB 3.0 drivers. After booting, the Plugable docking station did not activate on one computer. On the other computer, it "sometimes work" if I rebooted a few times. . . . It was a gamble.
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2. The engineers and designers should have placed an alternative eSATA port on the device. If the USB 3.0 did not work, the hard drive could use the reliable eSATA feature to activate.
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3. I spent over five hours trying to get this product to work without any positive results. The company's tech person also spent two hours on a Sunday afternoon without any success.
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UPDATE #1
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A few weeks after the above disaster, Plugable's tech department emailed me on a Thursday. The message expressed concern that my experience with their product was negative. Between the weeks, their engineers updated the firmware and wanted me to "try out" the revision, which I agreed.
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The package arrived on Saturday afternoon. I tested the docking station on my two main computers. Upon connection, the AUTOPLAY immediately recognized the device. On one computer, the file transfer rate was between 89 to 105 mb/s. On the other, the speed was between 79 to 84 mb/s. Considering my SATA file transfer rate between hard drives was 13-14 mb/s, this was a 600% to 946% increase in speed using the Plugable!
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I emailed the company's technician back with the good news and offered to pay for the device. He declined the payment. It was their way of saying thanks for reporting the defect and my attempts to make it work.
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What can I say? . . . The product worked beyond my expectation. In addition, I was very impressed with the firm's customer service. Any other company would "write the customer off" and treat him as a "lost sale" - a $60 loss is no big deal. Yet, the firm had their programmers personally researched and fixed the firmware problem within a short time, shipped the revision to me for testing, and declined any payment. . . . They did all that - - - unbelievable!
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I have never experienced such a consumer focused company with superb customer service. Every firm should be like this! . . . I am still flabbergasted.
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UPDATE #2
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There three design changes that would make this product perfect.
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1. The hard drive gets very hot after an extended session - this leads to shorten life span and other problems. Most of the heat is generated on the underside where the spindle and electronics plate are located. This temperature is trapped by the docking station's plastic on the bottom and two sides. . . . This heating problem can be solved simply by a small design change.
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First during mounting, the hard drive needs to be repositioned 180 degrees with the underside on top. The effect of this "flipping over the hard drive" is huge. The electronics and spindle are exposed to the open air for passive cooling.
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This change in hard drive mounting requires the two electrical connectors to be relocated from their present positions.
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2. The four 5/8" wide raised plastic rails on the plastic platform need to be deeper. At present, they are 1mm deep. The small space limits heat flowing out of the hard drive's opposite side. They need to be deeper - at least 1/8".
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3. The hard drive tends to "pop" out of the two electrical connectors during usage.
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The solution is to replace the two round rubber pads on the end of the docking station. Install 0.5" ones. This will tilt the hard drive platform in a slight angle. When the hard drive is mounted, gravity and weight will cause the device to go forward, thus the device maintains constant contact with the two electrical contacts.
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The slight tilt will also help in the cooling of the hard drive on the side which is resting on the dock's plastic platform. With the proposed 1/8" channels and a slight tilt, heat from the hard drive's opposite side rises up and flows out of the channels.

A recent win8 "upgrade" rendered all my SATA & USB docks nonfunctional and there are no drivers available anywhere- a major issue because I use about 10-15 old SATA "bare" drives (1-3TB) for backup in addition to the usual "external USB" backup drives. Research yielded nothing useful because most reviewers dont identify their OS and Win8 has a clear SATA driver issue. However I came upon an excellent detailed review by John Fenton on Amazon and decided based on his comments to try the "Plugable USB 3 SATA. My order was shipped locally out of CA and I had it within a couple days via OnTrac. The rest was awesome and the way it should be, unpack, connect, watch the OS discovery process with loading/downloading the driver (if necessary), insert your SATA drive and you're off to the races. Not even a minute. While I was mostly concerned wiht compatibility rather than speed, I had a pleasant and major surprise in terms of throughput. This unit delivers awesome speed but since I did not clock transfer times I have to refer to John Fenton's excellent review on that. My impression is that this dock delivers almost SATA like performance, backups seem super fast. I since ordered another identical dock which I received as well. An excellent well timed product which I can only recommend unreservedly.